LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Acupuncture

Back Pain Chiropractor Mesa AZ

by

Chiropractic Hospital –

CHIROPRACTIC CARE OF LOW BACK PAIN IN HOSPITALS IMPROVES CARE?  There have been many stories of the better outcomes and happier patients when chiropractic care is added to the ER care for patients with low back pain, but this is the first study that I’m aware of that actually proves it.  It makes sense.  I can’t tell you how many times patients went to the ER with their neck pain, headache, shoulder pain, mid back pain, low back pain before they came in to see me.  Rarely do they ever feel the visit produces any real benefit.  What if that patient had a chiropractor to see after everything else had failed (actually…it should be BEFORE everything else failed, but that’s an even larger hurdle to jump..)?  Reports from hospitals that have added chiropractic care to their ER consistently shows happier and better satisfied patients who presented with low back pain. Read More…

Acupuncture Can Reduce Arthritis Pain – (03-08-01)

by

Acupuncture Can Reduce Arthritis Pain

I think positive results in trials of acupuncture are probably the hardest for mainstream medicine to follow. There is very little correlation between our Western beliefs and Eastern medicine. It requires an entirely different view. Just because we do not understand something, however, does not mean it is ineffective. Acupuncture has literally thousands of years of anecdotal evidence relating to its effectiveness and safety. Mainstream medicine barely has decades.

(article) Acupuncture offers a significant adjunct to conventional therapy in the management of osteoarthritis, according to the results of an NIH-supported study of complementary medicine in osteoarthritis pain management presented here at the 17th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. Although more patients are turning to complementary medicine and more physicians want to integrate complementary medicine into their practices, evidence for the efficacy of these methods is lacking, according to Dr. Brian M. Berman, professor of family medicine and director of the complementary medicine program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Dr. Berman and colleagues at the University of Maryland conducted a study to investigate the impact of acupuncture on pain levels in osteoarthritis of the knees in the elderly. In the first phase, the researchers evaluated 73 patients, all with moderate to severe osteoarthritis of the knees, who were not relieved by anti-inflammatory medications. The subjects were randomized to continue on anti-inflammatory drugs alone or anti-inflammatory drugs plus 8 weeks of acupuncture treatment. “We found on the 3-month follow-up that there were significant changes,” Dr. Berman told Reuters Health. “Acupuncture did reduce their pain, they had less stiffness and they were able to function better.”

Acupuncture blocks stress on the heart – (11-26-01)

by

Acupuncture Blocks Sympathetic Nerve Activity to Heart

It is becoming more and more difficult to say that acupuncture has no effects on the human body… It is just so hard to accept the concept of a series of meridian, energy fields, etc… that can and do affect human health. I would go on to say that acupuncture is just one tool to be used in human disease management, but anyone who has studied traditional Chinese medicine already knows that they know this! TCM also includes herbal remedies and manipulation as well as acupuncture.

American Heart Association’s 2001 Scientific Sessions Dr. Holly R. Middlekauff of the Medical School of the University of California at Los Angeles pointed out that sympathetic nerve activity is two to three times higher in patients with heart failure. The higher the activity, the worse the prognosis. On the basis of animal studies that have shown acupuncture to be sympathoinhibitory, Dr. Middlekauff and colleagues selected 14 patients with advanced heart failure and randomized them to one of three treatment arms: traditional acupuncture with needles; acupuncture with needles but delivered to non-acupoints; and needleless acupuncture, in which patients were touched on the backs of their necks and believed they were receiving acupuncture. Investigators subjected the patients to 4 minutes of mental stress, having them perform math problems, “chastising them when they got the answers wrong,” and performing a color/word mismatch test, where they had to identify the correct color, while a written cue gave them the wrong answer (e.g., presenting the word “blue” in red letters). Stress testing was conducted prior to acupuncture and then again after a 20-minute session. During mental stress testing, sympathetic activity increased 25%, with increases in heart rate and blood pressure. However, a single 20-minute acupuncture session completely blocked these increases in the active treatment group. Patients in the non-acupoint and needleless acupuncture groups showed increased sympathetic activity as usual. “We would like to see what a full course of acupuncture would do,” Dr. Middlekauff commented. “Acupuncture could be adjunctive or complementary to beta-blocker therapy for heart failure patients.” She added that it could also be advantageous in patients intolerant of beta-blockade.

Acupuncture for chronic headache in primary care – (04-08-04)

by

Acupuncture for chronic headache in primary care

This was a relatively large study of patients with headaches being treated with acupuncture 12 times over the course of 3 months. Results were strong in favor of acupuncture. Just add this to the list of effective, non-drug, safe approaches to headache. Manipulation, soft tissue approaches, fever few are just a few others shown to be effective.

bmj.com Abstracts: Vickers et al. 328 (7442): 744

Read entire article here

Electroacupuncture for Tension-type Headache – (04-22-04)

by

Electroacupuncture for Tension-type Headache on Distal Acupoints Only

Let the sticklers in acadamia figure this one out. Acupuncture is definitely gaining ground on the research front.

Electroacupuncture for Tension-type Headache on Distal Acupoints Only: A Randomized, Controlled, Crossover Trial – Headache, ..

Read entire article here

DOES ARTHRITIS MEAN I HAVE TO HAVE PAIN FOREVER?

by

DOES ARTHRITIS MEAN I HAVE TO HAVE PAIN FOREVER?  In our office, the answer is almost always a strong “NO,” but it is a perception that many patients have, possibly because their PCPs don’t have many answers.  Keep in mind that the joint is surrounded by the soft tissues (fascia, ligaments, tendons, muscles) and, in most cases, these tissues actually create much more pain than the joint does.  Address the problems in the tissues surrounding the joint and the pain can go away.

In this particular study, the authors looked at what patients did after being given a diagnosis of knee arthritis.  75% percent of them took matters into their own hands by increasing activity levels, 33% turned to acupuncture, orthotics, braces and 36% started supplements.  The results were very encouraging–after 6 months,  the majority of patients in the study had found some relief from this approach.  I know that in our office, we strongly urge patients to increase their activity levels with very good results.

Read entire article here.